“Captain offered to watch the shuttle for a sec. What are you calling this one?” I knocked the petal with the butt of the flamethrower.
“There’s no name yet. We leave Galya to handle that, but probably something none of us can pronounce.”
“Yeah, they can never use a normal name.”
Elado requested Maddy’s help. She walked around me to meet him. She took objects out of their cart to take samples. Those samples were taken to the cargo hold. I thought the conversation ended sooner than it started, except Maddy gestured for me to follow her. My hands shook, and I white-knuckled the flamethrower to hide that.
“Being in the militia, have you flown a speeder?” she asked.
“Yeah, that was my primary job before this. I guarded vessels,” I replied while checking the trackers on my commlink. Roys remained in the shuttle, but there was no telling what he wasdoing.
“Been in a couple of fights then?”
“More than a couple. Have you been in a speeder?”
“No.”
“Do you want to be?”
She shrugged. “It could be fun if an idiot isn’t flying.”
“I fly the shuttle for a reason. I’m the best pilot on this planet.”
Her lips twitched into a smile. “There are barely over twenty people on this planet.”
“Still better than last.” I laughed, and she nearly did too. It was progress that gave me a small bit of courage. “After this tour ends, I might be able to convince the captain to let me take you out on a speeder. We can’t go fast or do any crazy maneuvers; the G’s will knock you out, but at least a test flight.”
“After this tour,” she repeated. The implication lingered. Maddy could end all my hopes. We had no reason to see each other. She would move up in the world, and I’d go nowhere. But she didn’t let me fall. She raised me up with a single word, “Okay.”
“Okay,” I repeated, breathless and dizzy.
We didn’t say more after that. I feared what I would do if I opened my mouth, if I let every feeling overtake me. They had been turbulent of late, a storm in an asteroid field, treacherous and deadly. For her and Roys. I didn’t know the maneuvers for this kind of storm, couldn’t fight or trick my way out of it. I just had to cruise along and see where it all would take me.
Not long later, Roys summoned me back where he smiled from the cockpit. The suns cast their rays through the windows, cradling him in a warm yellow light. He looked right sitting there munching on candy and offering me another piece that I accepted.
“Did it go well?” he asked, those big blue eyes full of life, the most exquisite shade I’d ever seen.
“As well as it could.” I dropped into the pilot seat, where I toyed with the candy wrapper.
Roys laid a hand on my thigh. There was no ulterior motive. It was a simple touch, an encouragement that spoke more than he could. It was just a little thing with far too much meaning. Then he left, and I sat there sucking on the candy and ripping the wrapper to shreds.
My head fell back on the seat. “Fuck.”
I had to get rid of the moira.
033
Asthehabitatslept,blissfully unaware of the turmoil within our walls, I snuck to the storage room. The candy box remained, but about a third of another vial lay empty. Moira was nasty shit. Addictive in a way that left its victims willing to lick the substance off grimy streets if one dared to drop a vial. When Roys learned the moira was missing, he would go through the vid footage. If I dumped the synthetic down the drain, I feared what he might do to retrieve even a drop of what he perceived to be the synthetic.
I had to incinerate this shit. The incinerator was outside. Once I left the habitat, Roys’ commlink would go off. He would come looking for me. I had to get to the incinerator before—
Roys stood in the doorway to the barracks. The first time I entered the storage room, he hadn’t been notified. He either set an alarm, or he wanted a bigger hit. His too-wide smile spoke enough. He had taken some of the vial earlier, because he had a giddy look about him, but the high wasn’t what it could be.
“Lucky.” That name from his lips didn’t sit right. He raised a trembling hand. “Let’s put that back. I was going to dispose—”
“Don’t lie.” I opened the pack, revealing the emptyspaces.
Roys’ smile didn’t relent, but his eyes had a wild look. Nothing existed except the vials. He had the same expression so many at the Colony had. Hunger that ate them away from the inside out. He had a taste and would do anything to get more. He was already scratching his arm so fervently that the arm band bunched in the crook of his elbow, revealing the freshly dark veins.
